“It’s inoperative,” said Jack quietly.
“And what does that mean?”
“It means Aditi’s probably cut it out.”
“Fuck”
There was a long pause as both men banished thoughts too terrible to contemplate.
“What about the other thing?” said Santosh in a lower voice. “Any news?”
Jack shook his head, spoke into his lapel. “Not yet. Old contacts at the Agency are working on it, but the problem is …”
“There isn’t much to go on. An international target in Mumbai …”
“It could be any one of a hundred.”
Santosh closed his eyes, wanting to open them and for it all to have been a nightmare. “Then we need to squeeze Munna. Nimboo Baba.”
Jack looked pained. “They’ll deny it, and we have nothing to connect them to it, apart from street gossip and the word of a bent cop who’s currently passing through the di
gestive systems of several vultures on Malabar Hill.”
“The killer,” said Santosh thoughtfully, waving the tip of his cane at the corpse by their feet. “Aditi Chopra. She’s the key to all this. If we can take her we can use her as leverage with Baba and Munna.”
Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “Then find her, my friend. Find her.”
Chapter 95
AND THEN, MUCH as it hurt him, much as he hated to be inside when he should have been out combing the streets for Nisha, Santosh went back to the Private HQ, recalled Mubeen and Hari too, then retired to his office—where he closed the door, picked up the phone, and dialed Nisha’s home.
Sanjeev Gandhe became very silent when he realized his wife’s boss was calling. “I’m afraid to inform you Nisha is currently missing, whereabouts unknown,” Santosh told him.
He was some kind of stockbroker type, Santosh knew. “Oh God,” he said in a small voice. “Is it something to do with the case she was working on, the strangler?”
“Mr. Gandhe, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say, but you can be reassured we are doing everything we can to find her.”
He wished he were as confident as he hoped he sounded. But getting off the phone, he put his head in his hands as though to massage his brain into life and all he could see were vultures tearing at skin, Isha in the arms of Rupesh, Pravir wanting him to see his high score.
Think, dammit, think.
Devika’s face had been whitened with talcum powder and in one hand she had been made to clutch a small drum, the sort of instrument used by street performers all over India. She’d been made to look like the eighth avatar of Durga—Mahagauri, who was always depicted with a fair complexion and holding a drum.
Which meant that the ninth would incorporate references to the discus, mace, conch, and lotus.
Great. They knew what to expect when they found Nisha’s corpse. The trouble was the Durga reference had no bearing on the location of the crime. At their home, at their place of work—it was all the same to Aditi. The one difference being she was holding Nisha captive.
Aditi was Nimboo Baba’s lover: “So where did the happy couple meet?” mused Santosh. “Where did you go to, Aditi? From the arms of Lara Omprakash into the clutches of Elina Xavier at the orphanage, and then …?”
There was a knock at the door. Hari stood there—a reduced Hari, his shoulders stooped, his eyes averted, a shadow of the beefy, muscular guy he’d been.
“Hello, Hari,” said Santosh, wishing that he could speak to him, wishing there was something he could say—something to ease the pain of his ordeal.
“I’ve got something, boss,” Hari said, unable to meet Santosh’s eye.
“Tell me.”
“You asked me to check the name Aditi Chopra against clients represented by Anjana Lal when she was just a lawyer, not a judge.”